Bush Web Site Pulls Clips After NBC Complains

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: February 11, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — Criticism from Republicans and Democrats that President Bush gave a shaky performance on Sunday on "Meet the Press" did not stop his re-election campaign from incorporating digitally enhanced excerpts from it into a promotional video that it posted on its Web site on Tuesday.

The campaign said it would remove the video from the site after NBC News complained that it was unfairly using the interview to support the re-election effort. The campaign said that it had violated no laws, but that it decided to take the video off after it realized how angry NBC News was over the use.

"Out of respect to NBC and our friends at 'Meet the Press,' we are working to dismantle it," the president's campaign spokeswoman, Nicole Devenish, said.

The campaign sent e-mail to six million people earlier in the day that included a link to the Web site, www.georgewbush.com/, where the video was posted about 4 p.m.

"We got to share with our supporters something in that interview that we thought was very important for them to hear," Ms. Devenish said.

That message, she said, would certainly be a central theme of the re-election effort, "steady leadership in times of change."

The spot opens with an announcer saying, "The president of the United States of America's role in a changing world," as the president is shown in his "Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert.

As strings play dramatically in the background, Mr. Bush says, "I've got a foreign policy that is one that believes America has a responsibility in this world to lead, a responsibility to lead in the war against terror."

The spot ends with the president saying: "To me that is history's call to America. I accept the call and will continue to lead in that direction."

Throughout the spot, the screen flashes gauzy images of the president as he addressed soldiers, the president as he saluted troops, the president as he shook hands with supporters and the famous view of the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in Baghdad.

NBC News executives said they were particularly alarmed that the excerpt ran with music and carefully chosen pictures of Mr. Bush.

The organization said in a statement, "This promotional video is set to music, edited for impact, and mixed with other images, graphics and footage unrelated to the interview."

The executives said the words seemed to have been digitally enhanced, to do away with some stammering.